Godzilla (2014)

★★★★ / 👍

When I saw Godzilla 1985 for my sixth birthday, I was underwhelmed. When I saw the Godzilla In Name Only at age 20, I was furious. Today I saw an IMAX-sized Godzilla on an eight-story screen, and am very happy indeed.

The film takes itself seriously, but isn’t afraid to wink at the audience on occasion. The human leads are fine but bland; you don’t mind too much when they are, inevitably, dwarfed by the spectacle. The film is a bit too coy about withholding said spectacle, but it hews closer to the slow-burn template of Jurassic Park than the tedium of Jackson’s King Kong. When it did finally come, the action fulfilled the dreams of my inner first-grader, which is honestly all I wanted from this movie.